Venture capitalist Mark Kvamme was Kasich’s original choice for Director of Ohio’s Department of Development – the cabinet agency responsible for business development activities for the state.

His appointment was never approved by the Senate. Instead, Kasich removed him and gave him a new, made up role as director of job creation for the State of Ohio when it became clear that Kvamme was not constitutionally eligible to serve because he’s a resident of California.

When questioned by the press today, Kvamme didn’t deny he’s a big fan of outsourcing US jobs. Instead, he actually seemed to embrace the idea, completely excusing foreign companies eager to steal jobs from Ohio and instead placing the blame solely on Ohio’s education system. According to Kvamme, we wouldn’t need to outsource jobs overseas if we were just educating enough computer scientists in Ohio.

According to a Gongwer report from this evening, Kvamme said “a lack of skilled workers in the IT field is to blame for jobs being sent overseas”. “If we don’t start graduating more computer scientists and engineers”, says the guy who is now responsible for bringing more jobs to Ohio, “those jobs are going to go away.”

Hmm…

Maybe Kasich should put Kvamme in change of education policy – or at least give him some face time with Bob Sommers, Jim Petro and and Tim Keen – because if Kvamme IS right, then Kasich’s current budget plans for K-12 and higher ed are going to lose us a shit load more jobs in the coming years.

You want to produce more software engineers in Ohio? That is NOT the way to do it.

Kvamme talks a good game and he comes across as a well-meaning guy. But when it comes to his excuses about outsourcing, I think he’s full of shit. Actually, I know he is.

As a software engineer who has worked in the private sector for over 15 years, I can tell you, for a fact (and Kvamme would be back me up if he was being honest), companies don’t send work to China and India and Mexico because there are more Chinese and Indian and Mexican software engineers. They don’t put projects are risk because of the time zone differences and communications challenges and the lack of on-site support and the extra layers of management needed to coordinate off-shore and near-shore resources.

They do it because it’s cheaper. A LOT cheaper.

Despite the fact that Kvamme is a Californian with an arts degree in French Economics and Literature, I have to give him credit for understanding that improving science and math education in Ohio is a great idea and is key to improving our competitiveness. As a native Ohioan with a Computer Science degree from Ohio State, I recommend that Kasich listen to Kvamme’s advice on this issue and restore education funding at every level.

Unfortunately, Kvamme’s ideas about education will NOT be incorporated into Kasich’s agenda, but his opinions and expertise on how to effectively outsource US jobs will be.

Some day people will try to explain to their kids why the Kasich administration was such a disaster, and most likely Mark Kvamme’s appointment to JobsOhio will serve as the example: John Kasich claimed he was going to be focused like a laser on bringing more jobs to Ohio, then he hired an outsourcing expert to be his Jobs Czar.

There is a book, _Juarez:The Laboratory of our Future_, by Charles Bowden. Might be useful checking.

daria

Every time I think that I have heard it all……..I can’t believe that one Republitard would agree to let this guy have any of their tax-dollars for his salary, even the one dollar he says he will take as payment.

Opinionated

I cannot agree more with your assessment about software development. I too have been working in ohio as a software engineer (since 1999). They don’t offshore because it’s cheaper. They offense because it appears to be cheaper. so far I have been involved in 4 projects that used offshore resources. They were all fixed bid so of course the promised output for a small price sounds great. But it was too good to be true. All of them had big domestic costs because of the huge amounts of rework needed to fix the code. none of those rework costs were incorporated into the real costs of the offshored projects nor were those lessons learned on the next project. kvamme needs to get a clue and actually talk to the workers instead of listening to the truthy statements put forth by CIOs.

Real Get Real

I also worked in software for over 25 years. The argument that there was not enough software developers was used by Gates et al in the industry at the height of the tech boom. They lobbied hard for H1b visas at the time. Early warnings were sent up by studies at Berkeley. I mentioned this to coworkers at the time and they brushed it off as me being “alarmist” – after all, they were all going to be the next billionaires. Several years later I spoke to one of these coworkers and he admitted I was absolutely correct – H1bs had destroyed his job and others coupled with outsourcing. I also put in a call to a young congressman’s office (Kasich) lobbying against a bill expanding the H1bs and actually got a call back from an aide. They listened, but essentially said I was ill-informed even when I quoted congressional hearings (chaired by Alexander) – they were already arrogant then! I also spoke to Riskind at the Dispatch and when I told him my sources were from the internet (house.gov) – he scoffed and politely hung up. But even Clinton supported this job destroying approach. America essentially sold out our country’s high tech to India and China.

Now, the Pirates of the Silicon Valley need to justify H1bs and outsourcing in a down economy. The argument just doesn’t pan out as myself and many coworkers are un or under employed while local firms are swimming in H1b workers (they fill the apartments around me) or ship projects overseas. Now they have the audacity to lobby to have overseas profits be brought back here tax free!

People have no idea what’s at stake until their own jobs are in jeopardy. It is the proverbial frog in the frying pan. Any job that can be outsourced or H1b’d will be – accounting, radiology, even teaching (re: Horizons Academy).

Interesting side note: I was at a PDC (Microsoft’s big national developers conference) and Gates was the keynote speaker. He accidentally used slides he normally presented to investors – not the techie crowd. On one slide preaching the wonders of their simple programming languages, his last bullet item was “to eliminate the priesthood of high tech workers”. In other words – the goal of Gates and his new product line was to eliminate the jobs of the very audience he was speaking to! Gates deftly ignored the slide, cracked a sly smile, and went on to the next one. Most of the sheep in the audience never even caught this and thought they were watching a god speak. I caught it, and as a young programmer, it really began to open my eyes at what really goes on.

Anonymous

Gee, I am so glade to hear that a “French Economics and Literature” major has control of Ohio’s job future. I only have a simple “Economics and Industrial Management” degree, but I know that the real reason for outsourcing is Corporate Greed! If our education system is to blame at all (and it is a BIG IF) it is because we do not teach a ratio of two ethics classes to every major class in college and one citizenship class for every keyboarding class in high school. Our republican friends in the legislature and the governor’s office are too busy blaming teachers to realize that they are the ones failing us by imposing arbitrary (and I would say dictatorial) testing to “prove” their claims that teachers have too many benefits. I’ve been married to a teacher for 39 years, and I’ve taught in the classroom myself and you can take it from me that there is a problem with education, but it is not the teacher!

Anonymous

Gee, I am so glade to hear that a “French Economics and Literature” major has control of Ohio’s job future. I only have a simple “Economics and Industrial Management” degree, but I know that the real reason for outsourcing is Corporate Greed! If our education system is to blame at all (and it is a BIG IF) it is because we do not teach a ratio of two ethics classes to every major class in college and one citizenship class for every keyboarding class in high school. Our republican friends in the legislature and the governor’s office are too busy blaming teachers to realize that they are the ones failing us by imposing arbitrary (and I would say dictatorial) testing to “prove” their claims that teachers have too many benefits. I’ve been married to a teacher for 39 years, and I’ve taught in the classroom myself and you can take it from me that there is a problem with education, but it is not the teacher!

Anonymous

Instead of giving Mark Kvamme a job title associated with the state government, we should just call him what he is—- Outsourcing Chief. Does Kvamme make any financial gain if he has Ohio jobs outsourced through his company? When he calls on companies to increase jobs, is he representing Ohio or his outsourcing company? Has he, in his role as director of job creation, suggested that a particular Ohio company outsource their work as a means of getting workers or making more money?

There are plenty of qualified high tech job candidates in Ohio. Some companies don’t want to put in the effort to find, hire, and pay for them.

Xx

Take a close look at what Apple is doing and you will see the exact same thing happening.

Carrieee4

Just goes to show you that Kasick really does not know what he is doing. He follows the party line but does not have the BRAINS to research or have a qualified researcher find the appropriate answers and ways to fix what he and his party see as a “problem” for Ohio. The problem with getting good computer “scientist is not that we are not graduating students who can do this type of job. They have to really want it. The colleges that are good or the best for computer degrees are expensive. With my teacher salary my son who is getting a degree in computer science as a MIT has student loans that will be over $100.000. He was lucky because he also received many scholarships on top of his loans or he would not have been able to go to a good college. This his last year his scholarships have actually helped him so much that the little he will get on the stafford loans will be all he will need for student loans and he will not need to get a personal loan for the rest of his school year. Hay Kasick want to get good computer scientist in Ohio? Make going to higher education less expensive and help keep the need for student loans down.

Carrieee4

As for outsourcing, my son has had 2 internships one where they were outsourcing their work to India and they had so much trouble for the cost with having to rework everything that they quit doing it and went back to doing all their own work here in Ohio. My son left that internship to go to another one who sought him out and they do no out sourcing he loves it there and they have said that outsourcing is a waste of time because they tried it and it was more bother than it was worth. Some people learn the hard way if it looks to good to be true it is and cheaper is not always better.